


The Five Stages

by annieoakley1



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 15:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annieoakley1/pseuds/annieoakley1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Katniss, I’m Peeta.  Peeta Mellark.  Uh, David’s son.  There’s been an accident.  You need to come home.”  Katniss receives a phone call that will change her life forever.  Modern day AU.  Written for Prompts in Panem's Round 3, Day 2 challenge.  Visual Prompt: The Death of the Virgin</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Five Stages

The sound of her cell phone vibrating on top of her side-table woke her from a restless sleep.  She ran her hand over her face, tiredly rubbing her eyes, and then reached for it.  She didn’t recognize the number calling.  Her eyes caught sight of her clock as she contemplated answering, and when she realized just how late it was, she was immediately filled with a sense of dread.

“Hello?” she asked cautiously.

“Katniss?”  She failed to place the male voice on the other end of the line.

“Uh, yeah, this is her.”

“Katniss, I’m Peeta.  Peeta Mellark.  Uh, David’s son.  There’s been an accident.  You need to come home.”  He sounded anxious, and then she heard a sniffle, but she couldn’t form any words as her mind raced with a million thoughts as he continued to speak.  “Um, I booked a flight for you at the airport, and it leaves in two hours.  My brother’s fiancée will pick you up and-”

“What happened?” she demanded.  “Is it my mom?  Prim?”

He paused for a mere three seconds, and Katniss knew then that her life would never be the same.

“Yeah,” he admitted.  “They were in the car with my father…”

She was already imagining the very worst as he trailed off.  “Is it bad?” she whispered.

He tried to answer but his voice caught, and she heard a strangled sound in the back of his throat before he repeated, “You need to come home.”

 

~*~

_“You need to come home!”_

_“Yeah, maybe after finals,” Katniss laughed, shifting the phone from the crook of one shoulder to the other before scrolling through her email._

_“Katniss!” Prim continued excitedly.  “Mom met someone.”_

_“What?”  She spun her chair away from her computer and grabbed the phone, pressing it firmly against her ear.  Her little sister now had her full attention._

_“Well, I guess they already knew each other.  From high school or something.  But they re-met and now they’re going on a date.”  Prim was speaking very matter-of-factly, but Katniss was sure she misheard.  Their mother was still reeling from her husband’s death, and he died nearly nine years ago.  She only recently rejoined the ranks of the living._

_For how many months did Katniss and Prim have to watch her sit and stare off into space?   How many nights did they stay with their grandmother because the woman who was supposed to take care of them couldn’t do so?_

_Now she was dating someone.  Katniss’s jaw set in frustration as she pressed her sister for more details._

_~*~_

Katniss had always been very adept at turning off emotions in order to do what needed to be done, so she did not think about anything other than the tasks at hand.  Like packing, hitting the ATM for cab fare, and then making the long trek back to the town she where she grew up.  She hadn’t been “home” for more than a year.

She had two hours on the plane to drown in her thoughts, but she refused.  She chose instead to work on a term paper that was due after break, reasoning that she would have more time to spend with Prim later if she got it out of the way now.

As the plane descended, she allowed herself to briefly entertain some of the worries.  Katniss knew that if her sister was seriously injured, then she would do whatever needed to be done to care for her, even if it meant taking a leave from school.  She was only beginning her second year, anyway, and family always came first.

The pretty young woman picking her up introduced herself as Natalie, Rye’s fiancée.  She was polite but quiet, and another word did not pass between them as they drove straight to the hospital.  Natalie dropped her off at the main entrance, and Katniss felt as if her stomach was bottoming out as she walked through the automatic doors.

 

**Stage 1: Denial**

_After six months of dating, the two moved in together.  Apparently the man, David, had a big, beautiful home in Victor’s Village, a fancy gated community just outside of town.  Prim was ecstatic when she shared the news with Katniss.  “I finally have my own room,” she sighed._

_Katniss couldn’t believe this was happening, and not even Prim’s joy tempered her annoyance.  “You’ve had your own room since I left for school,” she reminded her._

_“Not the same.  I still would’ve had to share it with you when you come home.  Now we each have our own!”_

_“Doesn’t David have, like, three kids or something?”_

_Prim sighed.  “Phyl and Rye don’t live at home anymore.  And Peeta lives with his mom, so…”_

_“So his weekend room goes to the new piece’s kid.  Nice.”_

_“No!  And why are you so mad?” Prim asked in frustration.  “Mom’s happy!  And David’s really nice.  You’d know that if you actually met him.”_

_“I gotta go, Prim.  I have to study.  I’ll call you later.”  She hung up before her sister could reply._

_There was no way her mother and David would last, anyway.  It wasn’t even worth getting upset over.  She gave them three more months, tops, before it all fell apart._

~*~

She vaguely recognized the one boy from a photograph.  He was the one her age.  The one who called.  When she got to the waiting area, he stood abruptly from his seat and crossed the room to greet her.  “Where are they?” Katniss asked.  “What’s going on?”

She didn’t expect his face to crumple, for tears to spring to his eyes as he looked away from her.  “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone,” he sobbed, and before he could continue, another man intervened.  He looked quite a bit like an older version of Peeta, and she quickly surmised that he was Phyl, David’s oldest son.  He, too, had red-rimmed eyes, and Katniss couldn’t stand another second of any of this.  “Someone better tell me what’s going on _right now_.”

The information washed over her in an overwhelming sense.  The three had been returning home from a baseball game when they were hit head-on.  Her mother was somehow ejected from the vehicle and was in surgery right now.  Her sister and their father didn’t make it to the hospital.

Didn’t make it to the hospital?  “What do you mean?” she asked, confused.  Where were they then?

“I’m so sorry, Katniss,” Phyl said, and she still didn’t understand. 

Even when the exact words were spoken (Prim is dead.  Prim.  She _died!)_ , she didn’t get it.  There had to have been a mistake.  Her sister was about to turn 16.  She was going to get her driver’s license and go to the prom.  She still had to graduate from high school and get into a good college.  She was going to become a doctor and _work_ in a hospital, not be carted to one as a lifeless body.

**Stage 2: Anger**

_She fought on the phone with mother for nearly twenty minutes, insisting that she couldn’t come home for the summer.  “I don’t have enough money saved for a flight, anyway,” she said._

_“I’ll pay for your ticket, Katniss,” her mother said in exasperation._

_“And how are you going to manage that?  I don’t want_ David _buying it for me.”_

_Her mother sighed dramatically, insisting that he wouldn’t be.  “We’d like to get everyone together,” she said.  “Phyl and his wife are coming in June, and Rye and his fiancée will be here.   Peeta’s staying with us now, too-”_

_“So your little family is complete! How quaint!”_

_Her mother was clearly growing frustrated, but she kept her temper in check.  “No, Katniss.  It’s not.  We want_ you _here.”_

_“Well, that’s just not going to happen.”_

_Later, long after they disconnected, Katniss pulled up a Facebook picture Prim had posted earlier that week.  She stared back at the four smiling faces, her anger mounting.  Both David and Peeta had the same fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes as her mother and Prim, and together they looked like an actual family._

_“What’s that Aryan propaganda you’re staring at, Catnip?”  She smirked as her friend, Gale, came up behind her, looking with her at the computer screen._

_“Disgusting, isn’t it?” she asked.  If her tone betrayed her, he didn’t pick up on it.  “You could knock, by the way.”_

_“No fun there.  So are these the evil intruders I’ve heard so much about?”_

_“Maybe.”_

_He shook his head, grinning as he looked back at the photo.  “Damn, I’m glad my mom swore off all men after my dad took off.  This would piss me off_ so _much.”_

_And it did.  It_ did _piss her off._

_At least Gale understood.  They sat together and mocked the picture, and when it was hard to cover her anger with humor, she stopped trying to do that.  Gale encouraged her wrath, told her to embrace it, that she was right to be upset.  Everything was changing.  Nothing was ever going to be the same._

_~*~_

The doctors wanted her to focus on her mother, but she didn’t give a damn about the woman they were still trying to save.  All she wanted was her sister.

Phyl, a big-shot lawyer (of course) had the nerve to warn her to not sign anything from any insurance companies while out of his sight, as if she cared at all about a settlement.  She looked over at Peeta, who was now curled up in a waiting room chair and crying silently, and wondered why his oldest brother wasn’t crying, too.

Katniss realized that she should be crying, but she was too busy being angry.  Her mother was the cause of all of this.  If she hadn’t been so adamant about starting a new life with a new man, then none of this would have happened to any of them.

_It should be her,_ she thought bitterly.  Her mother should be the one already down in the morgue, and her sister should be the one still fighting for her life.

The doctors soon arrived with news that she was currently on life-support, and they explained the situation carefully, in a surprisingly gentle manner and with easily understandable terms.  But Katniss only shrugged, her eyes narrowed as she focused on the hospital’s tile floor.

“Is there any chance that she’ll get better?” she finally asked, and the doctors responded with an emphatic no.

Well, she quickly reasoned, her mother was already comatose once, and that was more than enough.  “So take her off,” she told them.  She stood abruptly, suddenly incapable of sitting in that hard chair for another second, and made her way down the hall.

 

**Stage 3: Bargaining**

_It’s only for a couple weeks, she reasoned.  She can survive that._

_She pretty much had to go home for Christmas, right?  Even if home was now a new house she’d never been in before, and even if she felt like a stranger instead of part of the family…that didn’t really matter now.  Prim wanted her there.  She would do this for Prim.  She could do this for Prim._

~*~

She wanted to see Prim.  The doctors and nurses had discouraged it, but Katniss needed to say goodbye to her sister, and she didn’t want to do at the funeral, in a room full of well-wishing strangers.

Prim’s body lay on a metal slab, and it was completely covered by a light blue sheet.  Katniss pulled a folding chair next to her and sat down, tentatively reaching her hand out to pull the cloth back.  But every time her fingers grazed the soft material, she flinched as if she were burned. 

She didn’t want to see her like that, she realized.  She wanted to remember her sister as the sweet, spritely girl she was in life, not the pale shell she left behind in death.

Katniss would give anything, absolutely anything, to go back and change things.  She’d give anything to have visited home every chance she was given, to have put off studying to stay on the phone with her just a few minutes more. 

She’d give anything for it to be her on the table now instead.

She leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees, and she sobbed.

 

**Stage 4: Depression**

_“I can’t make it home.”_

_She wished to be on the phone with her mother again, because she’d gladly take the woman’s anger over Prim’s disappointment._

_She did try, really.  She had herself nearly convinced that she could make the trip back home and suck it up.  But when she was packing her suitcase, she imagined all the items she was taking,_ her _things, things from_ before _, and she pictured them in that house.  And they didn’t fit.  They didn’t belong there._

_Prim seemed to adore David, and he seemed to love her, too.  Katniss knew she should be happy that Prim finally had a father-figure in her life, but all she could think about was their real father.  Her father.  Prim’s father.  Oh, Prim was just a little girl when he passed, and she didn’t have very many memories of him at all, but she meant the world to him.  Both of his girls did.  And he never went a day without letting them know it._

_Now she wondered what would happen if her mom married this man.   Would he be the one who walked Prim down the aisle on her wedding day? Would he be the one who her children called ‘grandpa’?_

_Would Peeta, the seemingly perfect boy who was now living with them, replace Katniss as Prim’s confidant?  Why would she still need her sister now that she had a new brother?_

_Katniss was losing her family, and all she could stand to do was tell her sister she was sorry and then crawl into bed and cry._

~*~

She realized that afternoon that she had nowhere to go, and as Phyl and his wife and Rye and his fiancée left to start the arrangements, she found herself sitting alone with Peeta.  “You can stay at the house,” he offered, as if reading her mind.

They drove there wordlessly, and then he carried her bag for her inside.  “I’ll show you to your room,” he said, and he sounded so tired.  He sounded just as tired as she was.

She wondered which one of the closed doors they passed belonged to Prim.  Her own room was bare except for a new bed and large dresser.  She felt a stab of guilt but then the cold numbness she had felt since the morgue took over again.

Peeta left her alone and she climbed onto the bed, inhaled the scent of clean linens recently washed in anticipation of her arrival in a few days, and then she slid beneath the covers and slept.

She slept for days.  In the brief moments she woke, she drank from the glass of water that would magically appear on her end table, but then she closed her eyes again because sleep was an escape.

She had no idea how much time passed before Phyl’s wife, Emily, knocked softly on her door.  “Katniss?  Are you hungry?”

“No.”

But Emily coaxed her to eat something, and Katniss hurried to finish her soup so that she could go back to bed.  When Emily redirected her to the bathroom, Katniss showered just to get Emily to leave.

This became their routine, but Katniss wasn’t sure how long they fell into this pattern for.  She no longer had any sense of time.

“Phyl has been in contact with your school,” she told her one afternoon.  “It’s all taken care of, so you don’t have to worry about that.”  Katniss couldn’t even manage a simple thank you, even though she really was grateful to these people who stepped up to be the grownups now.

She looked across the room to see Peeta curled up on the couch, staring at the turned off television.

\--

Phyl, Emily, Rye and Natalie could only coddle them both for so long before their own lives and grief demanded their attentions again.  She found herself alone with Peeta most days, but they didn’t really speak.

\--

One evening, after she managed to choke down some of the food Peeta prepared earlier, she moved to sit next to him on the couch.  “Are you going to go back to school?” she asked.  She knew he was studying at the local college that semester, but she couldn’t recall him leaving the house since they returned from the hospital.  Katniss hadn’t even attended the funerals.

“I don’t think so,” he answered, and then they turned on the TV and fell back into silence.

\--

“I used to watch this with Prim,” he admitted one night when they were mindlessly watching some bad reality show.  She turned her head to carefully study him, and then she realized that maybe he missed her sister, too.  Normally the thought would anger her, because he was the interloper in her mind, but now she was so desperate to speak about Prim, to keep her alive with words, and all she wanted was someone to comfort her and commiserate with.

She asked him to tell her about what she missed in the year she was away, and he regaled her with stories about her sister.  She laughed when he told her about the ugly stray cat Prim took in, or the impossible crush she developed on a guy on his baseball team.  “I was trying to teach her how to parallel park, for her driving test,” he said, smiling.  “And as smart as she was, she just could _not_ get it.”

Katniss shook her head, smiling herself.  “I can’t imagine Prim not being able to do anything.”

“Yeah, well parallel parking was her Everest, I guess.  Anyway, the driver’s license center in another district only makes you do a K-turn, so I taught her that, and your mom promised to take her there for her test.”

They both stopped smiling.

\--

Peeta was doing much better than she was, as she still spent most days asleep in her room.  Nothing seemed to interest her. On the day her settlement check arrived in the mail, she only looked at it with a passing glance.  What did it matter if she was practically rich now?  What did anything matter?

“What are you going to do now?” she asked him that night in a heavy attempt to make conversation.  Sometimes she was just so sick of the silence, and he always seemed so weary of approaching her first.

The Mellark boys had settlements themselves, but she also heard the mumblings about a hefty life insurance policy.  But he surprised her when he said that he wanted to take over the bakery.

“I…I don’t think I’m ready for that yet, though,” he admitted.

\--

Weeks later, she stood outside Prim’s room, her fingers curled around the doorknob.  But she couldn’t manage just yet.  She wasn’t ready for that.

Instead, she marched to the room her mother shared with David, and she sifted through all the drawers and closets until she found the box of photographs from her childhood.  

“What are you doing?” Peeta gently asked her later, when she was sitting at the dining table and poring over the pictures.  He took a seat next to her and looked through the ones she already studied.  “There are so many things I don’t have photos of,” she admitted softly.  “Like what?”

“Like…Prim and our old dog, Lady.  She was about six when we first got her, and Prim tied a pink ribbon around her neck, and then Lady licked her face.  I never saw Prim smile so widely before or since.”  She tossed one of the photos onto the growing pile.  “I’m so afraid I’m going to forget all of these things.”

“I could _draw_ it for you,” he offered, as he looked at pictures of Prim at around that age. 

That was how they began the memory book.

\--

One evening, about a month or so later, they were both sprawled out on the family room floor, diligently working on their book.  Peeta was drawing something, but he hadn’t told her what, so she crawled closer to him and then peered over his shoulder for a peek.

“Oh,” he said, his cheeks reddening in embarrassment at her proximity.  “Um, this is from my first night here.”  He moved over so she could get a better look, and she saw that it was a beautiful picture of Peeta sitting in a chair as Prim stood over him, carefully tending to a large cut above his brow.  “What happened?” she asked, her finger hovering over the drawing of the injury.

“Um, my mom.  She was upset when I, um.”

“It’s okay,” she told him, not pressing for more information. 

\--

She was having a terrible nightmare.  In it, her father had just placed her newborn sister in her arms.  “Katniss, this is Primrose,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.  “Now promise me you’ll be careful.”

Katniss nodded her wide-eyed agreement, and then she stared down at the baby cradled against her chest.  But Prim’s lips were turning blue, and she was growing cold in her arms.  Katniss frantically called for her daddy, and when he appeared, he scooped Prim up and glared at his oldest daughter.  “What did you _do?_ ” he shouted.  “You promised you’d take care of her!”

She woke up thrashing in bed, and a pair of strong arms pulled her close.  “Shh,” Peeta whispered, stroking her hair.  “It’s just a bad dream.  It was just a bad dream.”  She collapsed against him, her tears soaking the front of his shirt.  She wished it was only a nightmare.

He stayed with her until she feel back asleep, and when she woke the next morning, she was still in his arms.  She knew then that this would be another routine for them both.

\--

“I was thinking about seeing someone,” he said to her one morning at breakfast.

“Huh?”

He scooped more scrambled eggs from the serving bowl.  “Like a therapist.  You know, someone to talk to.  I think it might help.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to come with me?”

 

**Stage 5: Acceptance**

_“We can’t wait to see you, honey,” her mother said.  “It’s been too long.”_

_“Yeah,” Katniss agreed. “It has.”_

_“Is there anything special you’d like to do on break?  I’m already planning some of your favorite meals, and David has season tickets, so we’ll go to some games.”  Her mother was rambling on happily, and heaven help her, Katniss liked it._

_“Prim’s working so hard to get all over her schoolwork out of the way,” her mom laughed.  “Peeta’s on break that week, too.”  Her mom sighed, her soft breath crackling over the line.  “I really do think you’ll like Peeta.”_

_~*~_

Dr. Aurelius was pleased with her progress, but he wanted her to focus more of her attention on dealing with unresolved feelings toward her mother.  “You have to grieve for her, too, Katniss,” he told her.  “You have to deal with your anger and allow yourself to miss your mom.”

Later, Peeta admitted that the doctor had said the same thing to him.  “What do you mean?” she asked, and he shrugged in response.  “He says I need to forgive my father.”

He rested his head on the back of the couch, turning to look at her.  “When they started dating, and then they moved in here, I was really upset,” he said.  “It’s like he had a new house, and a new family, and he forgot all about me.  And he seemed so _happy_ , and he was never that happy with my mother.”  He looked away then, focusing his eyes on the water bottle he held in his hands, his thumbnail picking at the peeling label. “Not that I blame him.  But still, it hurt seeing him act as a father to Prim when he refused to acknowledge what was happening with his own sons.”

His hand instinctively went to the faint scar just above his eyebrow, and he lightly touched it before continuing.  “It was only getting worse with my mom, and I came here and asked if I could live with them.  And he was happy about it, you know?  He promised that things would be different, and that we’d be a family again.  I wanted that more than anything, and for a few months it was perfect.”

She reached out for his hand and took it in her own. 

\--

She knew she needed to clean out her sister’s room.  She and Peeta were still debating on whether or not they would sell the house, but even if they decided to stay, they couldn’t keep this door locked forever.

It was hard, packing up her things, but it was still easier than she anticipated.

Peeta helped her fold the clothes from the closet and place them in donation boxes.  Several items were put aside to give her friends, and then there were some things that Katniss wanted to keep for herself.  Like a framed picture of the two at Katniss’s high school graduation.

She stared at the bare room when they were finished, and then she softly closed the door.

\--

The coat smelled so strongly of her mother’s perfume that it was overwhelming, and Katniss collapsed in sobs, clutching it to her chest as she fell to the floor.  Peeta wasn’t home, and she knew she should call Dr. Aurelius, but for the moment, all she could do was cry.  Cry for her mother.

“It’s a good thing, Katniss,” he promised her over the phone.  “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you needed to do that.”

Much later, when she was composed and only wistful, she leafed through the memory book with Peeta.  She turned to the page with a drawing of her family that she requested from him.  She was not in the picture; it was only her mother, father, and Prim.  “I’m not sure what I believe in, but I really do hope they’re all together right now,” she said, her fingers tracing along the edge of the page.

“Me, too,” Peeta said, smiling.  “But wow, talk about awkward for my dad.”

She looked up at him in horror, and then burst out laughing a second later. 

“I’m sorry,” Peeta apologized.  “That was-”

“A joke,” she said, grinning.  “And we needed it.”

\--

They curled up next to each other on the couch, her head resting against his arm as they watched a movie.  He was chewing on some popcorn, his jaw flexing with each bite, and she became mesmerized watching him.  His jaw, his smooth and fair skin, the curve of his cheekbone, the slope of his nose.  His eyelashes, so blond they were normally undetectable, were longer than she ever imagined.  And his hair was falling down over his forehead in messy waves, and he kept pushing them back, away from his face.  When he felt her watching him, he turned his pale blue eyes on her, and she didn’t allow herself to overthink it before she leaned in to press her lips against his.

He froze for only a moment, and then returned the affection with equal fervor, his mouth melding to hers.  She parted her lips, touched her tongue to his, and he sighed against her as the kiss deepened.

\--

She signed up for some spring classes at the local college  It was a small step, but a necessary one, as Dr. Aurelius was fond of saying.

One Saturday, as she pulled at the weeds sprouting up along the walkway, Peeta pushed a wheelbarrow full of primrose bushes from around from the shed.  “I thought we could plant them along the side of the house.”

“I’d really like that,” she said, smiling.

After dinner that night, she was helping him load the dishwasher when he snuck in a kiss.  But something was different, and she couldn’t fight it even if she wanted to.  She desired more this time, and she pulled away breathlessly, her eyes searching his before she grabbed his hand and led him to their room.

\--

They undressed each other slowly, with a peppering of gentle kisses against the newly revealed skin.  When they were both naked, she fell back against the pillows, pulling him with her, and he settled between her thighs, pushing forward slowly.  “I’m sorry,” he breathed as she gasped in pain.  He held still for as long as he could, and then she urged him to move.

He couldn’t last for long, and after a series of steady thrusts, and Katniss clutching at his shoulders, he pulled out and came against her stomach, gasping for air.  They held each other tight, their breaths the only sound in the dark, quiet room.

\--

That also became part of a routine for them, and it was easily the one they enjoyed the most.  The experimentation was fun, and they were still in desperate need of that.

He spent most of his days at the bakery, and she at classes.  In the evenings, they went out with friends or visited Phyl or Rye and their families, or stayed in and spent a quiet night home together.

He was on top of her, urging her on all fours, and she struggled to hold back screams as he moved against her.  “I didn’t think anything could ever feel as good as you do, right now,” he whispered in her ear, and she moved her hand to wrap it around his as it pressed against the mattress.

She cried out moments later, and he followed soon after, collapsing next to her on the bed.   He grinned at her and she returned it, both panting from exertion.

 She used to worry that nothing would ever be good again, but Peeta proved otherwise.  For the first time since that night at the hospital, she had hope.

“I love you,” she told him, and his eyes widened. 

“Really?” he asked, smiling happily.

She laughed.  “Really.”

-End

 

 

 


End file.
